AntiNorn

AntiNorn is by far one of the most controversial members of the Creatures Community. He ran a website called Tortured Norns, placing Norns he'd tortured on the site for people to rehabilitate. It was later revealed that he did this to teach people to look after animals, but he received an enormous amount of hate mail and was ostracised from the community.

Take cruelty, for example. One Creatures fan (who I believe is in the US Navy) started a Website entirely devoted to ways in which people could be cruel to these creatures. He devised various tortures to make their little lives a misery, and I think he did so with his tongue firmly in his cheek and a challenging grin on his face. I was so pleased about this (although I didn't dare say so publicly while I still represented the company that made Creatures, for fear that it would upset our customers), because it forced people to think about whether this really was cruel,. I expected him to elicit some response from the other Creatures owners, but not quite such a hostile one as ensued. The poor guy received an enormous amount of hate mail, and was excluded from the Creatures Internet community for a long time. Much of his hate mail showed a greater regard for the creatures than it did for the life of this one human being.

Less traumatically, I was pleased to see people start up Websites of their own in response, setting them up as rehab centers and adoption agencies to provide shelter for the poor victims of this virtual abuse. This was not the behaviour of people who felt that life had been debased by the existence of artificial beings, nor was it the behaviour of people who were scared of artificial intelligence. These people were going out of their way to protect and care for these creatures, and they held them in equal regard to other more natural forms of life. They may have been overreacting, but I was glad of the sentiment.

In a Wired interview entitled "Virtual Sadism", which goes into more detail on the death threats, AntiNorn had this to say:

Tell me what you've learned so far with this experiment on the Creatures community.

The primary thing I've learned is that the majority of so-called "loving" Creatures players are vindictive, hateful people who lack a firm grip on reality.